by Byron
A sound which makes us linger; – yet – farewell!
Ye! who have traced the Pilgrim to the scene
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell
1670
A thought which once was his, if on ye swell
A single recollection, not in vain
He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell;
Farewell! with him alone may rest the pain,
If such there were – with you, the moral of his strain!
Epistle from Mr Murray to Dr Polidori
Dear Doctor, I have read your play,
Which is a good one in its way, —
Purges the eyes and moves the bowels,
And drenches handkerchiefs like towels
5
With tears, that, in a flux of grief,
Afford hysterical relief
To shatter’d nerves and quicken’d pulses,
Which your catastrophe convulses.
I like your moral and machinery;
10
Your plot, too, has such scope for scenery;
Your dialogue is apt and smart;
The play’s concoction full of art;
Your hero raves, your heroine cries,
All stab, and every body dies.
15
In short, your tragedy would be
The very thing to hear and see:
And for a piece of publication,
If I decline on this occasion,
It is not that I am not sensible
20
To merits in themselves ostensible,
But — and I grieve to speak it — plays
Are drugs — mere drugs, sir — now-a-days.
I had a heavy loss by ‘Manuel,’ —
Too lucky if it prove not annual, —
25
And Sotheby, with his ‘Orestes,’
(Which, by the by, the author’s best is,)
Has lain so very long on hand
That I despair of all demand.
I’ve advertised, but see my books,
30
Or only watch my shopman’s looks; —
Still Ivan, Ina, and such lumber,
My back-shop glut, my shelves encumber.
There’s Byron too, who once did better,
Has sent me, folded in a letter,
35
A sort of — it’s no more a drama
Than Darnley, Ivan, or Kehama;
So alter’d since last year his pen is,
I think he’s lost his wits at Venice,
Or drained his brains away as Stallion
40
To some dark-eyed and warm Italian;
In short, sir, what with one and t’other,
I dare not venture on another.
I write in haste; excuse each blunder;
The coaches through the street so thunder!
45
My room’s so full – we’ve Gifford here
Reading MS., with Hookham Frere,
Pronouncing on the nouns and particles
Of some of our forthcoming Articles.
The Quarterly — Ah, sir, if you
50
Had but the genius to review! —
A smart critique upon St Helena,
Or if you only would but tell in a
Short compass what — but, to resume:
As I was saying sir the room -
55
The room’s so full of wits and bards,
Crabbes, Campbells, Crokers, Freres, and Wards
And others, neither bards nor wits: —
My humble tenement admits
All persons in the dress of gent.,
60
From Mr Hammond to Dog Dent.
A party dines with me to-day,
All clever men, who make their way;
Crabbe, Malcolm, Hamilton, and Chantrey,
Are all partakers of my pantry.
65
They’re at this moment in discussion
On poor De Stael’s late dissolution.
Her book, they say, was in advance —
Pray Heaven, she tell the truth of France!
Thus run our time and tongues away. —
70
But, to return, sir, to your play:
Sorry, sir, but I can not deal,
Unless ’twere acted by O’Neill.
My hands so full, my head so busy,
I’m almost dead, and always dizzy;
75
And so, with endless truth and hurry,
Dear Doctor, I am yours,
JOHN MURRAY.
BEPPO
A Venetian Story
ROSALIND: Farewell, Monsieur Traveller: Look, you lisp, and wear strange suits: disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your Nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think that you have swam in a Gondola.
As You Like It, Act IV. Sc. 1.
[Annotation of the Commentators.]
That is, been at Venice, which was much visited by the young English gentlemen of those times, and was then what Paris is now – the seat of all dissoluteness. S.A.
[Samuel Ayscough]
I
’Tis known, at least it should be, that throughout
All countries of the Catholic persuasion,
Some weeks before Shrove Tuesday comes about,
The people take their fill of recreation,
5
And buy repentance, ere they grow devout,
However high their rank, or low their station,
With fiddling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masquing,
And other things which may be had for asking.
II
The moment night with dusky mantle covers
10
The skies (and the more duskily the better),
The time less liked by husbands than by lovers
Begins, and prudery flings aside her fetter;
And gaiety on restless tiptoe hovers,
Giggling with all the gallants who beset her;
15
And there are songs and quavers, roaring, humming,
Guitars, and every other sort of strumming.
III
And there are dresses splendid, but fantastical,
Masks of all times and nations, Turks and Jews,
And harlequins and clowns, with feats gymnastical,
20
Greeks, Romans, Yankee-doodles, and Hindoos;
All kinds of dress, except the ecclesiastical,
All people, as their fancies hit, may choose,
But no one in these parts may quiz the clergy, –
Therefore take heed, ye Freethinkers! I charge ye.
IV
25
You’d better walk about begirt with briars,
Instead of coat and smallclothes, than put on
A single stitch reflecting upon friars,
Although you swore it only was in fun;
They’d haul you o’er the coals, and stir the fires
30
Of Phlegethon with every mother’s son,
Nor say one mass to cool the caldron’s bubble
That boil’d your bones, unless you paid them double.
V
But saving this, you may put on whate’er
You like by way of doublet, cape, or cloak,
35
Such as in Monmouth-street, or in Rag Fair,
Would rig you out in seriousness or joke;
And even in Italy such places are,
With prettier name in softer accents spoke,
For, bating Covent Garden, I can hit on
40
No place that’s call’d ‘Piazza’ in Great Britain.
VI
This feast is named the Carnival, which being
Interpreted, implies ‘farewell to flesh:’
So call’d, because the name and thing agreeing,
Through Lent t
hey live on fish both salt and fresh.
45
But why they usher Lent with so much glee in,
Is more than I can tell, although I guess
’Tis as we take a glass with friends at parting,
In the stage-coach or packet, just at starting.
VII
And thus they bid farewell to carnal dishes,
50
And solid meats, and highly spiced ragouts,
To live for forty days on ill-dress’d fishes,
Because they have no sauces to their stews,
A thing which causes many ‘poohs’ and ‘pishes,’
And several oaths (which would not suit the Muse),
55
From travellers accustom’d from a boy
To eat their salmon, at the least, with soy;
VIII
And therefore humbly I would recommend
‘The curious in fish-sauce,’ before they cross
The sea, to bid their cook, or wife, or friend,
60
Walk or ride to the Strand, and buy in gross
(Or if set out beforehand, these may send
By any means least liable to loss),
Ketchup, Soy, Chili-vinegar, and Harvey,
Or, by the Lord! a Lent will well nigh starve ye;
IX
65
That is to say, if your religion’s Roman,
And you at Rome would do as Romans do,
According to the proverb, – although no man,
If foreign, is obliged to fast; and you,
If Protestant, or sickly, or a woman,
70
Would rather dine in sin on a ragout –
Dine and be d—d! I dont mean to be coarse,
But that’s the penalty, to say no worse.
X
Of all the places where the Carnival
Was most facetious in the days of yore,
75
For dance, and song, and serenade, and ball,
And masque, and mime, and mystery and more,
Than I have time to tell now, or at all,
Venice the bell from every city bore, —
And at the moment when I fix my story,
80
That sea-born city was in all her glory.
XI
They’ve pretty faces yet, those same Venetians,
Black eyes, arch’d brows, and sweet expressions still;
Such as of old were copied from the Grecians,
In ancient arts by moderns mimick’d ill;
85
And like so many Venuses of Titian’s
(The best’s at Florence – see it, if ye will,)
They look when leaning over the balcony,
Or stepp’d from out a picture by Giorgione,
XII
Whose tints are truth and beauty at their best;
90
And when you to Manfrini’s palace go,
That picture (howsoever fine the rest)
Is loveliest to my mind of all the show;
It may perhaps be also to your zest,
And that’s the cause I rhyme upon it so:
95
‘Tis but a portrait of his son, and wife,
And self; but such a woman! love in life!
XIII
Love in full life and length, not love ideal,
No, nor ideal beauty, that fine name.
But something better still, so very real,
100
That the sweet model must have been the same;
A thing that you would purchase, beg, or steal,
Wer’t not impossible, besides a shame:
The face recalls some face, as ’twere with pain,
You once have seen, but ne’er will see again;
XIV
105
One of those forms which flit by us, when we
Are young, and fix our eyes on every face;
And, oh! the loveliness at times we see
In momentary gliding, the soft grace,
The youth, the bloom, the beauty which agree,
110
In many a nameless being we retrace,
Whose course and home we knew not, nor shall know,
Like the lost Pleiad1 seen no more below.
XV
I said that like a picture by Giorgione
Venetian women were, and so they are,
115
Particularly seen from a balcony,
(For beauty’s sometimes best set off afar)
And there, just like a heroine of Goldoni,
They peep from out the blind, or o’er the bar;
And truth to say, they’re mostly very pretty,
120
And rather like to show it, more’s the pity!
XVI
For glances beget ogles, ogles sighs,
Sighs wishes, wishes words, and words a letter,
Which flies on wings of light-heel’d Mercuries,
Who do such things because they know no better;
125
And then, God knows, what mischief may arise,
When love links two young people in one fetter,
Vile assignations, and adulterous beds,
Elopements, broken vows, and hearts, and heads.
XVII
Shakspeare described the sex in Desdemona
130
As very fair, but yet suspect in fame,
And to this day from Venice to Verona
Such matters may be probably the same,
Except that since those times was never known a
Husband whom mere suspicion could inflame
135
To suffocate a wife no more than twenty,
Because she had a ‘cavalier servente.’
XVIII
Their jealousy (if they are ever jealous)
Is of a fair complexion altogether,
Not like that sooty devil of Othello’s
140
Which smothers women in a bed of feather,
But worthier of these much more jolly fellows,
When weary of the matrimonial tether
His head for such a wife no mortal bothers,
But takes at once another, or another’s.
XIX
145
Didst ever see a Gondola? For fear
You should not, I’ll describe it you exactly:
’Tis a long cover’d boat that’s common here,
Carved at the prow, built lightly, but compactly,
Row’d by two rowers, each call’d ‘Gondolier,’
150
It glides along the water looking blackly,
Just like a coffin clapt in a canoe,
Where none can make out what you say or do.
XX
And up and down the long canals they go,
And under the Rialto shoot along,
155
By night and day, all paces, swift or slow,
And round the theatres, a sable throng,
They wait in their dusk livery of woe, –
But not to them do woful things belong,
For sometimes they contain a deal of fun,
160
Like mourning coaches when the funeral’s done.
XXI
But to my story. – ’Twas some years ago,
It may be thirty, forty, more or less,
The carnival was at its height, and so
Were all kinds of buffoonery and dress;
165
A certain lady went to see the show,
Her real name I know not, nor can guess,
And so we’ll call her Laura, if you please,
Because it slips into my verse with ease.
XXII
She was not old, nor young, nor at the years
170
Which certain people call a ‘certain age,’
Which yet the most uncertain age appears,
Because I never heard, nor could engage
&nb
sp; A person yet by prayers, or bribes, or tears,
To name, define by speech, or write on page,
175
The period meant precisely by that word, –
Which surely is exceedingly absurd.
XXIII
Laura was blooming still, had made the best
Of time, and time return’d the compliment,
And treated her genteelly, so that, dress’d,
180
She look’d extremely well where’er she went;
A pretty woman is a welcome guest,
And Laura’s brow a frown had rarely bent,
Indeed she shone all smiles, and seem’d to flatter
Mankind with her black eyes for looking at her.
XXIV
185
She was a married woman; ’tis convenient,
Because in Christian countries ’tis a rule
To view their little slips with eyes more lenient;
Whereas if single ladies play the fool,
(Unless within the period intervenient
190
A well-timed wedding makes the scandal cool)
I don’t know how they ever can get over it,
Except they manage never to discover it.
XXV
Her husband sail’d upon the Adriatic,
And made some voyages, too, in other seas,
195
And when he lay in quarantine for pratique
(A forty days’ precaution ’gainst disease),
His wife would mount, at times, her highest attic,
For thence she could discern the ship with ease:
He was a merchant trading to Aleppo,
200
His name Giuseppe, call’d more briefly, Beppo.
XXVI
He was a man as dusky as a Spaniard,
Sunburnt with travel, yet a portly figure;
Though colour’d, as it were, within a tanyard,
He was a person both of sense and vigour –
205
A better seaman never yet did man yard:
And she, although her manners show’d no rigour,
Was deem’d a woman of the strictest principle,
So much as to be thought almost invincible.
XXVII
But several years elapsed since they had met;
210
Some people thought the ship was lost, and some
That he had somehow blunder’d into debt,
And did not like the thought of steering home;
And there were several offer’d any bet,
Or that he would, or that he would not come,
215
For most men (till by losing render’d sager)
Will back their own opinions with a wager.
XXVIII
’Tis said that their last parting was pathetic,
As partings often are, or ought to be,
And their presentiment was quite prophetic
220
That they should never more each other see,
(A sort of morbid feeling, half poetic,
Which I have known occur in two or three,)
When kneeling on the shore upon her sad knee,
